A couple years ago, I started asking God for boldness. Not boldness in the sense to speak my mind, the way the world views boldness, but to speak the Truth. I wanted to be able to share my faith with others. Up until that point, the conversation of faith in Christ was shut down by people in my life.

I heard a lot of reasons from many people why someone shouldn’t be a Christian. I was called a lot of names because the person God recreated me to be was not the same person that people had memory of. It felt a lot like they were rejecting me, even know now I realize it was never about me.

But without hindsight, that’s what it felt like. I’ve lost friendships and community with people because of choosing to live my life for Jesus. There was a time that this shut me down to share my faith with others.

Fear of rejection.

Fear of ridicule.

Fear of judgment.

Fear of not being favorable.

I didn’t want to live in fear—it’s so exhausting!—so I started asking God to give me opportunities for Him to produce boldness within me.

He loves setting people free, so I knew He would do that for me.

So, of course He did.

It’s so cool when God gives you opportunities to exercise how much He’s grown you and this praise challenge was a confirmation of that. So the fact that I completed this challenge and boldly proclaimed what God wanted to say through me for others deserves so much praise.

If it was up to me, I wouldn’t post any of this.

God is a God that answers prayers, especially when they are according to His will. As His chosen child, I will not look for the approval of man because it means nothing to me anymore. I’ve been called out to proclaim the praises of the One that called me out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

1 Peter 2:9

I became very aware of the human condition throughout this month. Emotions, when left unmanaged, can be terribly misleading.

There were days where I didn’t feel like praising God.

There were days where there didn’t seem like much going on that was “praise-post-worthy.”

There were days that were just regular old days.

How ridiculous is that?

As humans, we can be so terribly distracted. Completely consumed with ourselves. Insatiably filling ourselves with more of us and our own little world.

And then there’s Jesus.

Worthy of every breath.

Worthy of every song.

Worthy of every thought.

Worthy of every praise.

Worthy of everything.

When you stop your world to intentionally find something to praise the Lord for, you become so aware of how much you’ve missed. Without doing this challenge I don’t know how much longer I would have lived unaware of how easy it is to feel like what’s going on my world is more important.

How many more days would just come and continue to be regular old days?

How many more moments of praise would I have missed?

Because the truth is, He can’t stop thinking about me. I want to get caught up in thinking about Him.